But while many are leaving behind their formal religious affiliations and practices, this growing nation is still seeking to connect with religious and wisdom traditions — either that of a different faith or their own faith in a different way.

"Those who are leaving — or who are not joining — may still desire religious and spiritual guidance," said Michelle Scheidt, a senior program officer at the Fetzer Institute, "and we are seeing this need and interest crop up in other places. This is what we're tracking, both within religious and spiritual contexts, and in the popular culture."

Fetzer has documented this in a new report called "Sharing Spiritual Heritage."

The report is based on years of research as well as conversations with leaders within historic faith traditions and those leading new forms of spiritual community and practice outside of historic faiths: rabbis working in innovative Jewish communities, Catholic sisters with decades of experience in contemplative community life, seminary faculty, denominational leaders, interspiritual and multi-faith teachers and nonreligious seekers.

"I really feel kinship with so many people right now who are looking through their own lineages and wisdom traditions … to really ask, ‘What are the practices, what are the teachings that can serve us in these truly tumultuous times?'" said Adam Horowitz, co-founder of Taproot, a community that calls itself "rooted in Jewish wisdom."

Many of the institutional leaders in this emerging sector identify as being on the "renewal" edge of their faith tradition.

They refer to this time as "de-institutionalizing of religion," particularly within American Christianity.

But across several traditions, leaders see themselves reclaiming the core of institutional religion and handing it on to the next generation of followers, which may look very different from the religions of the past century.

As they serve and hold in reverence the traditions they practice, they are asking bold questions about the future, attuned to the needs of the people they serve and hope to serve:

• How will we hold onto the rich teachings of our historic faith and wisdom traditions while applying them creatively in today's time?
• Are the spiritual formation processes within existing religious structures declining in relevance in public life?
• How will we reimagine roles and institutions as the spiritual and religious landscape dramatically shifts?

These leaders find themselves carrying forward wisdom from their traditions, satisfied that though the core theologies are largely unchangeable, their practices and social norms are evolving.

They are asking how these practices might carry their traditions forward without bringing their histories and social identities. Is this even possible?

Proponents of this work believe it is.

Asked how she would describe sharing spiritual heritage, Rabbi Sara Luria, founder of Beloved, "a home-based experiment in Jewish life," explained, "I am holding onto someone behind me, and holding onto the person in front of me. And I'm the intermediary between what was and what will be."

As spiritual innovation emerges both inside traditional religion as well as other places, such as the arts and sciences, there is a tension among those imagining the future of religion about whether the existing infrastructures can sustain and nurture the held sacred wisdom.

People in the field question whether they should work inside of traditional institutions or offer related but separate spaces.

However religion evolves, leaders of these movements agree that sharing their traditions must include deep respect for the source of the original practices, with attention to authenticity, cultural adaptation and potential for misappropriation.

The thought-provoking and inspiring insights in Sharing Spiritual Heritage offer pathways for individuals to engage in deep spiritual work and experience fellowship.

Grounded in diverse and ancient wisdom, the report shows how spiritual communities can integrate rituals, symbols, practices and narratives that nurture the spiritual life, inspiring growth and depth.

Such practices help seekers learn to better embody love and manifest the inner life through an outer life of service to others, fostering not just their own transformation but the transformation of society.

Leaders and practitioners across multiple traditions are responding to this increasing need, eagerly sharing their learning and experience with those who continue the spiritual search.

These religious practitioners offer their gifts as an inheritance to the next generation, freely given for the future and for the common good.

"I would say that I'm a seeker, like so many who have come before me who are seeking the knowledge of the divine, the knowledge of the universe and the knowledge of love in ourselves and in the world," said Milicent Johnson, founder of The Octavia Fund, who participated in the sessions that gave rise to the report.

Stakeholders across various traditions and organizations have named sharing spiritual heritage as important work in need of cultivation.

They have made recommendations for the future, including opportunities that will help create bridges between the religious traditions and spiritual seekers, developing and testing strategies for spiritual formation and building networks of collaboration that strengthen the sector.

Source

• Content sponsored by Fetzer Institute. The Fetzer Institute is helping build the spiritual foundation for a loving world. It works with thought leaders to develop programs, research projects, convenings, and funding collaborations in the sectors of faith, spirituality, democracy, education and organizational culture.
  
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.
• Image: Channel 4

Christensen explains that successful companies are those that can meet not only their customers' current needs but anticipate their future ones too.

Disruptive innovators - disruptors - are more likely to displace established companies, even when they are small and have relatively fewer resources.

According to Christensen, a disruptor often begins by either attracting the dominant businesses' less-demanding customers or by creating an entirely new market.

Disruption creates both a new market and a new "value network".

"Innovation" describes the ways companies find to enhance their customer's experience, so the customer knows they are valued and cared for.

The customer experiences the value of belonging to the "family" of the company and the experiential value of belonging to the "community of customers" keeps them faithful and attracts others.

The business world speaks well of leaders who are "movers and shakers", disruptors because they achieve what others cannot - change.

In church circles, change leaders are often vilified because they challenge the established, sacred cows.

The application of disruptive-innovation to our current experience of liturgical practice helps us see why the fundamental presumption of liturgy as a communitarian event, where the ritual elements of a priest, people, Sunday, church, music, eucharistic prayer and communion that once made sense, no longer do.

The disruption to the concept of community has created innovative forms of worship; forms that no longer presume the use of all or most of the ritual elements of catholic worship.

Liturgical disruption: What it looks like

Let's consider what liturgical disruption is by looking at the world around us.

In the world of taxis, Uber is described as a disruptor, but this might not be entirely accurate. While Uber has challenged the taxi business it hasn't moved the concept of personal transport in a radically new direction.

When we look at the movie industry and Netflix, we see a different effect.

I first discovered Netflix while living in the United States when DVDs were delivered to our homes. I remember thinking why would I do this when I can walk to the local video shop?

Now, I watch streamed movies and news programmes in a variety of languages from across the world.

Initially, Netflix didn't disrupt the supply of movies - video shops continued to exist.

However, Netflix capitalised on the advent of the internet and disrupted the fundamental behaviours of movie watching people around the world.

The disruption of customer behaviours matched with innovations in customer services has seen the growth of the Netflix community (customer base) and the death of the local video shop's customer base.

The death of video shops and the morphing of cinema's into bars and cafes with movies attached, to survive, is indicative of the disruption-innovation needed to survive significant behavioural change.

Applying these considerations, I suggest that the proliferation of online masses is not the key disruptor - it is more Uber than Netflix.

Online masses predate COVID and the sheer volume of them now should not distract us. The volume is not the key disruptor because it has not brought a change in foundational behaviours.

The transference of the mass' performance-based ritual from the sanctuary to the screen did not disrupt already existing liturgical behaviours; priests did what they normally do - perform the rituals - and believers did what they normally do - watch the rituals being performed.

Thus, the ritual behaviours didn't change because the already dominant operative, behaviours were not disrupted.

The behavioural disruption came with the inability to recreate the physical presence of the community and physical participation in the shared eucharistic meal - even to the point where concelebrating presbyters uses separate chalices and individually consecrated host rather than sharing these elements.

If anything, the online mass has unwittingly contributed to the liturgical disruption of the physical liturgical community by taking the viewer from the pew to the couch.

The disruption-innovation of the liturgical community

Liturgical life during COVID offers three considerations of disruption-innovation:

First, habitual worshipping practices have been disrupted and behaviours that have been central to liturgical and parish life have radically changed.

With safety defining liturgical behaviours believers are more prepared to stay away from church gatherings, to pray at home, or even celebrate a "lay Eucharist" with family instead of going to Mass.

Second, online masses and worship groups have innovated choice; as a colleague suggested online ‘worship has become promiscuous.'

The dynamic of choice is not new - for example, in my experience people move between parish masses based on a variety of reasons such as a convenience, the liturgical style of the mass, or the music.

Now the choice includes legitimately worshipping at home.

While the church (corner video shop) is the place to find "spiritual communion" our attention is now turning to the innovation of the "domestic church" and home worship as the new locus of authentic liturgical prayer.

Third, and most importantly, the behaviours of the physical liturgical community have been radically disrupted and innovated. Community is a threat (disruption) as well as something we want (innovation).

While believers can search the web for a community, they can feel safe in, this is not always the case for physical community.

Profound disruption to liturgical behaviour has come through social and physical distancing, wearing masks, communion from behind a screen, prohibitions on singing, restricted numbers, and closed churches.

These have altered our behaviours and changed the way we experience the liturgical community; they have changed our shared understandings of the community itself.

When we stand in the car park, chatting after mass, we realise implicitly that our physical behaviours inside the church say; "worship and church community are dangerous and it's safer not to participate".

The foundational disruption to the physical community has changed our liturgical behaviours, and, therefore, our experience of prayer itself, which the phrase lex orandi, lex credendi summaries: we pray (orandi) what we believe (credendi).

Because we are a community who pray what we believe and who bring our belief to prayer, the disruption of prayer will have an impact on the belief.

When we pray online and reduce Mass to spiritual communion for the viewer the potential danger is to extenuate the clerical aspect of Mass and formalise visual participation as "sufficient" for belief.

When a family prays a "lay eucharist" at home they exclude the presbyterial ministry. In both instances, the disruption to the community has changed our behaviours and along with it our presumptions of authentic liturgical prayer and ministry.

The foundational disruption to the communitarian aspect of lex orandi/lex credendi will show itself in accommodations to "liturgical masks" and "liturgical distancing".

Such accommodations have the potential to move the physical celebration of liturgy from "we" to "I", thereby returning worship to a privatised, or self-isolated ritual action.

Thus, the most significant disruption to liturgy is the disruption of the physical community and the most important innovation to the liturgy are the new ways of being a liturgical community.

I suggest, the disruption-innovation to communal prayer (lex orandi), will likely impact not only the church's communitarian framework but also its presumptions of authentic ministry.

Liturgical innovation - future changes

The disruption-innovation of the COVID-liturgical period can only be sketched.

Liturgical history shows that naming disruptors is not easy because liturgy evolves over a longer timeframe and generally does not anticipate social and cultural shifts, it reflects them.

However, liturgy's formal struggles with adaptation and innovation are always related to changes in behaviours and theological contexts.

If we are to benefit from the disruption-innovation to the community we are creating, I suggest understanding this current change will require a more sophisticated concept of the church as people in God and worship as people in God at prayer.

It will require a higher level of ecclesial leadership and a much higher calibre of liturgical leadership and insight than we have seen recently from Vatican departments.

The disruption to the physical community is greater than online, virtual worship and the effects on who we worship with, who we are as Christian people and, ultimately where we belong, remain to be considered.

• Joe Grayland is a theologian and a priest of the Diocese of Palmerston North. His latest book is titled: Catholics. Prayer, Belief and Diversity in a Secular Context (Te Hepara Pai, 2020).
• Article first published in La Croix International. Republished with the author's permission.

In fact, more people are displaced now than at any other time in human history — some 65 million, 22 million of whom are classified as refugees, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Not only that, but most refugees are not going home anytime soon, if ever.

Today's displaced people need more than a short-term place to live until their homeland's crisis is over. Rather than living in camps for nearly a generation, refugees require permanent resettlement and the skills necessary to become self-sufficient in their new homes.

What's needed are innovative solutions to address what some — including Pope Francis and many bishops — are calling the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time.

But "innovative" doesn't always have to mean a new agency or even new program.

In fact, according to a recently-released report on the Catholic response to this problem, many church-led organizations and programs are creatively serving refugees and migrants, without having to start from scratch.

"You can have institutions and organizations that have been around a long time be really creative in responding to urgent social problems," said Tiziana Dearing, co-director of Boston College's Center for Social Innovation and the lead researcher for "Catholic Social Innovation in Today's Global Refugee Crisis."

The study was funded by Foundations and Donors Interested in Catholic Activities (FADICA) to give more exposure to programs that may not be seen as obvious "social innovators" by other funders because they're run by a 2,000-plus-year-old institution.

"There's a perception that any institution that already exists is not likely to be innovative," said Dearing. "But much innovation can come from existing communities and infrastructure."

Catholic social innovation tends to repurpose existing resources and draw on existing relationships to address issues such as the refugee crisis, the study found.

Innovative Catholic programs also are inspired by Catholic social teaching, according to the report, which highlighted 64 projects, more than half of which are affiliated with Catholic sisters.

One is the training and skills centers run by the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in Tunisia.

Many African and Middle Eastern migrants trying to make their way to Europe have gotten stranded in Tunisia, located in the northernmost point in Africa.

Without marketable skills, they often turn to exploitative illegal work, said Sr. Mary Louise Stubbs, executive director of the order's International Project Services, which provides development assistance to sisters working in 64 countries.

Local Daughters of Charity were already providing emergency assistance in Tunisia, but realized the migrants needed to learn skills that could provide income to support their families.

So, in addition to offering medical care and children's education, the sisters started providing training in tailoring, welding, hairdressing, shoe repair, bread making and computer work for adults.

Dearing said the training program illustrates two trends in innovative service to refugees: an emphasis on self-sufficiency and what's called a "two-gen" approach that addresses entire families. Continue reading

• Image: NCR